Drew_Geraci

Love the colors and light in the shot!

I've spent the last 3 weeks traveling all over the Pacific Northwest and have found that I've fallen in love with winter landscapes from all forms of environments. I'm currently in Banff and using the A7RV with the 50mm 1.2GM and the colors, textures, and vibrancy of image quality I get is something that truly excites me! Where are some of your favorite spots to film when the temps drop and the snow comes out?

Hey Drew, I totally feel you on the updating side of things with the lens firmware, or firmware's in general. You may want to honestly invest in a very cheap PC because that will honestly give you the best experience for updating firmware (since the coding doesn't change) as it's not Sony's direct fault that updates can be difficult on a Mac. Apple changes its coding language quite frequently with each OS update which is why MANY programs often take a while to be re-coded or modified so they work well on newer Macs (especially with Apple Silicone).

I just spent/had the worst production travel experience of my life. We had 3 planes get canceled back to back (each a day apart) and throughout the process, we had to travel to 2 different airports 3 hours away. I lost so much time and was so angry at first but after doing some calm breathing and chatting with my partner, calmer minds prevailed. Even though our production suffered multiple days of setbacks if you keep a positive attitude and push forward good things will happen too. I'm curious if anyone else has had any nightmare travel scenarios of their own and what you did to overcome them.

It looks both warm and cold at the same time! Well done!

Vlogging is great! I'm starting a new series for a production I'm working on called "Project Preservation" aimed at protecting in-danger of disappearing landscapes - I'm really excited to launch it later next year. What kind of stories are you looking to vlog about yourself?

Smoke bombs are great! Nice work with yours. Just wrapped up a couple of video shoots using them as well.

Thanks for sharing and welcome!!

Lifted blacks definitely have a following with a lot of creators as it was/is basically used to simulate 'log' footage with a bit more contrast (back in the day, aka 2010). I'd say if you like the look and your clients like it, keep it up!

I've been finding myself using clip-in filters quite a bit recently, especially for my wider lenses like the 14mm and 12-24mm. I use to use a bunch of giant matte boxes to cover the different sizes of lenses in my arsenal but I'm finding them to be more cumbersome and clunky the more I use them. I'm curious what everyone's favorite go-to solution is for ND filters. List your favorite below!

Lovely! The color makes them 🙂

I'd definitely recommend the 24-105mm as well - it's probably one of the most versatile lenses Sony makes (for photo or video!).

Timelapse is one of my favorite things to do (built a career out of it!) - Love your landscape shots! Have you considered using NDs to drag the shutter to create motion blur to make it look a bit more cinematic?

Great to have you here! Love the non-self-portrait too! Hope to see you at the next Kando 🙂

Welcome to the club!! It's an addiction and it's real, haha. Great to have you! I was Canon for 10 years before switching to Sony. It was the RIGHT choice 🙂

First. These are AWESOME, and well executed!! Second, how did you separate the model and the dry ice (so it wouldn't harm her)? Can't wait to see more!

If you're using High Sierra then you're going to have issues. It's 5 years out of date and will likely only work for older Sony cameras (A7R2/A7II). You'll likely need to update your OS to be able to view the most recent camera raw versions (and then download via Adobe).

Every time I go out on set I have to determine if I want to shoot video on my A7S3 or my A1 and I'm curious if anyone else has trouble figuring out which one is best for the job! I use to the A7S3 quite a lot for video since that's what it's designed for (the high-ISO is amazing) but I often find myself using the A1 because it has all of the same features and abilities of the A7S3, but also the added benefit of filming 8k (I also like that you can actually zoom into focus and check that it's set correctly, which you can't do on the A7S3). Which camera(s) are you most excited about when it comes to filming video?

Yasss!! I'm headed out that way in a few weeks too. Should be amazing out there. Can't wait to see what you capture 🙂

I use the Kodac Slide N Scan, film scanner - which produces a 1:1 replicate of the shot while retaining all of the detail and color digitally and works great for volume scanning. Using a 90mm macro is also another way to do it albeit super time consuming!

If sound isn't important, S&Q is the way to go. If you want to be able to have both slow-motion capabilities and audio capabilities then shooting 60/120p natively is the way to go.

Snow-covered landscapes are my favorite!! Especially mountains 🙂

Licensing is quite simple once you understand the terms you and your client want. There are two types, Rights Managed and Royalty Free. If you want to make money, RM is the way to go, and if you want to sell bulk, RF is the way to go. The number one thing is understanding how the images/video are going to be used, what media space they'll live in (print, web, tv, film etc), how long they'll be in use, and whether or not they are exclusive or non-exclusive to the client. All of these aspects are incredibly important when understanding how much you should charge. The game has changed quite a bit in the last 10 years thanks to cheap stock sites like Adobe, Pond5, Getty, and iStock (all horrible), which makes it very difficult to charge what the image or video is likely worth. That being said, never sell yourself short on what you should be valuing your work at.

*H.264 (slip of the finger!)

For video, it's a Windows 10/11 thing. They stopped supporting hvec codecs for thumbnails a while back. The only way to do it is to transcode it to ProRes (or an H.254 .Mov) and you should see the thumbnails return. You might try downloading the VLC player though and see if you have any luck with that. Windows and Sony also both stopped supporting RAW thumbnails quite a few years back too (for still photos).